


Wom8n Scorned

by Zenolalia



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: F/F, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17250479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zenolalia/pseuds/Zenolalia
Summary: Be careful who you date after you join a book club in a basement.





	Wom8n Scorned

May didn’t need to tell Peter. He would only fret, and that boy had enough trouble to deal with on his own merits, without adding any of hers. Besides, if it worked out he would hear about it. Otherwise, it could be her secret. Things had gotten better for women who started up with other women in the last 25 years, and Peter would never think poorly of her. Not after he’d turned 19, at least. But, he would worry about her safety, and then she would worry about being a distraction.

No need at all.

It had started with a book club, which was boring when she phrased it that way. Might be more exciting to say it started with a circle of inventors all looking to pool their resources—sometimes financial, and always intellectual. A gathering of bright minds confined in the basement of a bookstore. Most of them had exciting jobs on the forefront of engineering and technology, but May wasn’t the only retiree looking for something to do with her empty nest.

So, a book club.

A book club where May bartered cookie sandwiches for access to a hermetic clean room on university campuses sometimes.

It was so nice to surround herself with her peers. With people who had come to New York at all ages, from all backgrounds, for its bright and shining future. People who committed themselves to that shine, even when reality was a bit—a lot—dirtier.

On her third week, the most beautiful woman had swept into the room. She was half hidden under scarves, squinting behind glasses that should have been replaced years ago, with hair that would take hours to get a brush through for all the disuse. Even so, her eyes shone, and her hands danced when she spoke, and every word out of her mouth glowed with delight.

When the formal discussion ended and everyone drifted into their little clusters of similar studies or similar interests, May should have been nagging after Jameson’s progress on his new heat sinks. But, she’d gotten distracted with staring at the woman with the hair like a thunderstorm and the smile like a mountainside. It wasn’t a subtle thing to do. But, subtlety was for rambunctious children with a good 70 years left on their shoulders. So, when the woman flung her arms up to the sky and turned her head to avoid getting smacked by her own wrists, May didn’t look away. She kept right on watching, as the woman didn’t even bother to excuse herself from her discussion and danced across the painted concrete floor, her shoes almost silent even in a space that could politely be referred to as an echo chamber.

“Newcomer?” The woman asked.

“Been here a good 10 years longer than you, I’d say.” Which was an opaque thing to say to a younger woman who’d left two men in the lurch to come and talk to you from across the room. But the woman just laughed like the world was ending and there was nothing left to do but hope for the best.

“Olivia,” she’d said around too many teeth, hand jammed into the space between them. “Call me Liv.”

* * *

15 hours later, in a mess of a bed, surrounded by a mess of a room that was more workshop that sanctuary, neck and wrists aching in a way that said she really was too old for this kind of thing and muscles loose in a way that said she wasn’t old enough to stop, May decided it was a suitable name. If Olivia knew anything, it was how to live.

Peter’s increasingly irate set of text messages when she wasn’t there to let him into his shed was the closest thing in the last 20 years to anyone lecturing her for staying out too late. Sending him back a half dozen peach emoji only to get question marks in response was a delight.

Excusing herself from the apartment and wandering back to her own house, she felt younger than she had since Ben had died. Maybe younger than she’d felt since Ben had come back from the front with his own medals and half a dozen friends’ tags. She could almost see his smile.  
He would have approved of a woman like Liv. Bright eyed and flamboyant. Ben had always been more sociable than May. He would have liked her having such a bright spark in her life.

* * *

Things stayed like that, for a while. Book club on Thursdays, and overnight at Liv’s afterwards. An obvious pattern, but no one would watch May’s movements.

Anyway, it was good for her to get out and socialize with people other than Peter and the cashier at the bodega. Two months into their not-quite-a-relationship, she was inspired to set up the garden shed for keyless entry. And after the next meet up, re-configured it to react only to the radioactive signature of Peter’s powers, so he couldn’t get it into his fool head to fight crime when he got depowered three times a year by super villains who had stopped having a creative bone in their bodies 5 years back. If he wanted to go in there and work on another serum or microwave or whatever else to power back up, he could come and ask her for help like a grown up. And otherwise, he could stop setting her phone off at 4 in the morning when there was someone else sleeping beside her to be woken up.

* * *

They compared scars sometimes. Maybe morbid, but they were women who had fought their way into unforgiving fields at unforgiving times. They were queers who had survived riots and mobs. They were New Yorkers who had lived through bombings and a golden age of superheroes and of super villainy.

So, maybe not morbid. No one cared about a dead body’s scars.

When Liv came to their book club with a plastic hospital band hanging off her wrist, May didn’t worry. Maybe she should have. But, there had been enough grave injuries in her life these past few years. She didn’t scare easily. And that night, when Liv’s back was covered in raw, glossy burns in the shape of a vest, with great black and red bruises blooming on either side of her spine, May believed her when she said it had been a lab accident.

“This is what you get for ignoring lab safety, you know.” She’d said, and then collected her—necessarily, but unreasonably—large first aid kit and rubbed analgesics onto Liv’s skin until she couldn’t feel her own fingers anymore. “Lucky you didn’t break your back.”

“Safety makes you slow,” Liv had muttered,

“You wouldn’t need to be so fast if you were more careful.”

Liv just laughed at that, then flinched away from her own laughter when it shifted her ribs the wrong direction.

* * *

Liv and May met more often. Lunches, usually. Easier for Liv’s lecture schedule, given that her graduate level lectures were after working hours. And, though the garden shed made it something of a security risk, sometimes those lunches were served over May’s formica kitchen table. The only problem being that sometimes during tea on the couch afterwards, sometimes Liv had unfortunate stains from her day job on her clothes. May might not have been too old for necking on the sofa like a teenager, but she was definitely too old to scrub coolant and thermal paste out of the upholstery afterwards.

She bought some tacky vinyl covers for the cushions.

Liv brought some kind of electric-tingling bright purple gel over the next day, grinning that needlepoint smile of hers. “Conductive agent. It’ll be the next big thing in electrograms next year. And if you dilute it, it doesn’t even stain.”

They did not dilute it.

And for all that Liv’s hands and May’s thighs were stained like grape soda for a week after, the couch was clean as a whistle.

Best $35 she’d ever spent.

* * *

May cackled maniacally as she shoved an entire handful of strawberry jelly into the ludicrous mass of Liv’s hair, to match the spoonful of peanut butter Liv had launched across the table and onto May’s forehead.

“I’m going to have to shower for a week!” Liv choked out through her laughter.

“It’ll do you good, girlie.” May said, shoving her hand further into the mass of tangles and waggling it around for emphasis. “It’s a miracle this hasn’t all fallen out.”

“You just want an excuse to see me all wet. Horny old pervert!”

“Oh, like I need the help.” May replied.

When Liv opened her mouth to respond, the voice that came out sounded remarkably like Peter’s, albeit with the eye-watering sound of a sore throat and stuffed nose. “Should I, uh, should? Do you want me to come back. Later?”

The problem with having lunch and flirtations in her kitchen, it turned out, was less one of security, and more one of Peter needing to come in the kitchen and ask for help like a grown-up when he inevitably got depowered for the third time that year. This time complete with some kind of fever.

“Oh, god, Parker?” Liv all but screeched, though she didn’t actually try to disentangle her hair from May’s. Probably for the best. It was always tricky, and May liked having all of her fingers. She’d kept them for 68 years so far. She took a deep breath and wormed her fingers to freedom, refusing to consider why her girlfriend knew her nephew’s last name. Liv knew May had been married and had been a Parker in those days. It was a reasonable, logical conclusion and the fact that Liv gave graduate level lectures and thesis advice in four fields, one of which happened to be Peter’s own field of study, definitely had nothing to do with that.

“Aunt May, I think I’ve had too much dayquil.” Peter said, voice shaky as he dumped himself and the three parks he had stuffed himself into onto an abandoned kitchen chair.

“Right.” Liv said, her grin off-kilter. She seemed to be trying to make herself smaller, which was ridiculous given the state of her hair and the jelly and her overall lack of subtlety. “I’m going to gooo, I’ll see you next week, Parker. If you bring that snot into my classroom, I’ll tear your limbs off and beat you with them! Bye, May!”

And then she was out the door and running away like a chastised stray cat.

“You think I’ll remember this when the fever breaks?” Peter whined, head lolling to one side. He looked like his head might fall off. He did not, however, look delirious.

“Sorry, kiddo. You should have knocked.”

* * *

Liv missed a book club, and for all they’d been seeing each other for more than a year at that point, their boundaries were firm. Their lives were very much their own. So, May sent her a quick text message to ask if she needed any cold medicine, and when she got no reply, went home, watched TV, and went to bed.

The next morning, she had a notification from Liv. “Wouldn’t turn down some little old lady barbiturates but no cough drops thx.” May huffed something too early morning sleepy to be a laugh, put on her robe, and headed downstairs to make some toast.

Peter had dragged himself into her kitchen some time over night. His suit was torn in a dozen places, and his ankle had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. He was also, thankfully, breathing.

He was too heavy to get upstairs to a bed, but what was the point of having couch covers if her boy couldn’t bleed all over them. He groaned and shivered all the way across the floor and onto the couch, but he barely moved a muscle while she cleaned out his cuts, put ice on his bruises, and put a pressure wrap on his ankle.

She texted Mary-Jane that he was safe and sound, albeit banged up worse than usual, and let him sleep it off.

By the time he woke up the next morning, most of the abrasions and cuts had healed, and the bruises had faded to sickly yellow. She had two dozen pancakes on a turkey platter waiting for him and his gargantuan post-healing appetite.

When he bolted upright, ignored the food, and all but tripped over the coffee table to get to kneel in front of her, May knew something had gone more wrong than just a dislocated ankle and bruised ribs.

“You have to break up with Professor Octavius,” he said, breathless and wide eyed. Looking panicked. His words made no sense.

“I what?” She asked, lost. Peter looked like he might start crying. He was breathing too fast. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to make himself sick.

“She’s Doctor Octopus,” he said, voice crawling higher pitched. “She’s dangerous, Aunt May, you can’t keep seeing her. She knows where you _live_!”

May’s life had often been bizarre, even absurd, since Peter had told her he was Spider-Man. He looked more scared now than he had when he’d been 17 and wary, coming to her with a secret that was, frankly, different from the one she had expected. Maybe Peter was right to look more lost and confused now than he had then. May certainly felt it. She had been his age, once, and knew how to deal with a teenager’s secret prides and shames.

Dealing with a long-term affair’s years of unspeakable violence against her city, her home, and her  _child_ was a very different matter. 

She needed to comfort him, bring down his panic before it got out of hand. And in a faraway part of her mind, she knew that. But instead of grounding, soothing promises, the first words out of her mouth were, “I’ll kill her.”

That made things worse. Peter’s tears broke, and he made a horrible, dying sort of cry. He threw his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides and squeezing tight enough to make breathing difficult. “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.”

He was only 24. Still a child in so many ways. May came back to her senses, straining to bend her elbows enough to put a comforting pressure on her boy’s chest. “No, no, I won’t. I’m here. It’s all right, Peter, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. It will be okay. I’m okay.”

* * *

May stopped going to her book club.

And, three missed weeks later, when Liv came to her front door, looking anxious. May let her into the living room one last time.

“We’re done, Olivia.”

Liv’s smile had gone off to one side again, like she had forgotten how to move her entire mouth at once. Her fingers fluttered aimlessly in her lap. She had combed her hair out, so there were no tangles, but had done nothing else. It drifted in a floaty cloud around her, held up by the static of a cheap brush. Still, her voice was a clear and curious as ever, and her eyes were so wide. “Is it because Parker transferred out of my program?”

“He changed advisors because I asked him to. I didn’t want to put either of you in an awkward position. So no,” May lied, unshakeable, “I’m not breaking up with you over Peter.”

Liv stared at May, gaze steady even as her entire body swayed from side to side. A posture that had been so charming, only a few weeks ago. One that May now recognized from grainy news clips of this woman beating her child to a pulp in a desperate bid to do foolish things for foolish reasons. May’s hatred had gone cold. She could all but feel her blood turning to stone.

Maybe Liv could sense that. She stood up, hair swimming around her as she moved. “I don’t appreciate being strung along, you know.”

She left, and May slept with a baseball bat in her bed and Peter on her couch for a week afterwards, waiting for the inevitable fury of a woman with 8 limbs scorned.

**Author's Note:**

> I almost dated a woman from a book club in a basement and she turned out to be a FUCKENING TERF so really, like, do be careful about that.
> 
> Also this was edited by a writing program not a person, so if you see any spelling, syntax, etc errors I didn't catch, drop me a comment and I'll make the fix and even credit you in these here notes.
> 
> And yes, the title is Vriska Quirk. No regrets, homestuck for life.


End file.
